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Argues that the depletion of the world's tropical rainforests has caused irreversible ecological damage. Explores the loss of biodiversity, drastic…
climatic changes, and the uprooting of indigenous populations. Describes the debate about the severity of these problems, especially in British Columbia and the Amazon. For senior high and older readersThe opposing viewpoints in this volume concern the environment. Scientists debate the causes and effects of global warming, whether it…
poses a serious threat to human life, and how to preserve the rainforests that are endangered by slowly rising temperatures. For junior and senior high and older readersKatakis defines stewardship as a way of seeing, thinking, and acting on this planet with underpinnings of honor, duty, and…
courage. Reflecting this idea are essays by thirty authors, including Wendell Berry, Gerald Vizenor, and Gary Paul Nabhan. In her contribution, Mary Catherine Bateson discusses the integral part death plays in both forests and families. Some strong languageEssays illustrating the need for humans to learn to live in an environmentally sensitive manner. By authors such as Edward…
Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and Onondaga chief Oren Lyons, the essays are grouped in three sections. The first depicts the current state of nature, the second describes the impact of growth-driven economics and overpopulation, and the third offers some possible solutionsBilled a book for Walden Woods, this collection of essays was compiled to raise money to protect the development-threatened woods…
made famous by Henry Thoreau. The concerned authors include a number of celebrities such as Robert Redford, Cesar Chavez, Tom Hanks, Jimmy Carter, Wallace Stegner, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and Edward Kennedy. They discuss either Walden Woods or other environmental problemsAnticosti: 450 millions d'années de vie
Par Mathieu-Robert Sauvé. 2023
Île d'une beauté à couper le souffle, véritable joyau québécois dans le golfe du Saint-Laurent, Anticosti est un territoire immense…
qui fascine aussi bien les amants de la nature que les chercheurs de ce monde. Son écosystème original en fait un site d'exception. À l'été 2022, dans la foulée de la candidature d'Anticosti pour intégrer la liste du patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO, Mathieu-Robert Sauvé a parcouru l'île en long et en large pour nous la faire découvrir au-delà de ses paysages de carte postale. Au fil des entrevues qu'il a réalisées auprès des scientifiques et des insulaires, il nous dévoile l'épopée fascinante qui a mené tant de géologues, de botanistes, de biologistes et nombre d'experts à se passionner pour cet endroit uniqueOn Borrowed Time: North America's Next Big Quake
Par Gregor Craigie. 2024
Finalist, Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and Victoria Butler Book PrizeA Globe and Mail Top 100 BookThe Big One and…
what we can do to get ready for it.Mention the word earthquake and most people think of California. But while the Golden State shakes on a regular basis, Washington State, Oregon, and British Columbia are located in a zone that can produce the world’s biggest earthquakes and tsunamis. In the eastern part of the continent, small cities and large, from Ottawa to Montréal to New York City, sit in active earthquake zones. In fact, more than 100-million North Americans live in active seismic zones, many of whom do not realize the risk to their community.Building a cyber risk management program: Evolving security for the digital age
Par Brian Allen. 2024
Cyber risk management is one of the most urgent issues facing enterprises today. This book presents a detailed framework for…
designing, developing, and implementing a cyber risk management program that addresses your company's specific needs. Ideal for corporate directors, senior executives, security risk practitioners, and auditors at many levels, this guide offers both the strategic insight and tactical guidance you're looking for. You'll learn how to define and establish a sustainable, defendable, cyber risk management program, and the benefits associated with proper implementation. Cyber risk management experts Brian Allen and Brandon Bapst, working with writer Terry Allan Hicks, also provide advice that goes beyond risk management. You'll discover ways to address your company's oversight obligations as defined by international standards, case law, regulation, and board-level guidance. This book helps you: understand the transformational changes digitalization is introducing, and new cyber risks that come with it; learn the key legal and regulatory drivers that make cyber risk management a mission-critical priority for enterprises; gain a complete understanding of four components that make up a formal cyber risk management program; and implement or provide guidance for a cyber risk management program within your enterpriseDispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging
Par Jessica J. Lee. 2024
INSTANT TORONTO STAR BESTSELLERThe prize-winning and bestselling author of Two Trees Make a Forest turns to the lives of plants…
entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared futureA seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere?The themes in these fourteen essays become invigorating and intimate in Lee’s hands, centering on the lives of plants like seaweed, tangelos, and soy, and their entanglement with our human worlds. Lee explores the rich backstory of cherry trees in Berlin; a tea plant that grows in the Himalayan foothills just southwest of China; the world of algae and wakame, and the journeys they’ve made to reach us.Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being "out of place"—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Lee looks at these plant species in their own context, even when we find them outside of it.Dispersals draws a gorgeous, sprawling map of the diaspora of flora. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.Birds of New Guinea: Second Edition (Princeton Field Guides #97)
Par Thane K. Pratt, Bruce M. Beehler. 2015
The definitive field guide to the marvelous birds of New GuineaThis is the completely revised edition of the essential field…
guide to the birds of New Guinea. The world's largest tropical island, New Guinea boasts a spectacular avifauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, cuckoos, kingfishers, and owlet-nightjars, as well as an exceptionally diverse assemblage of songbirds such as the iconic birds of paradise and bowerbirds. Birds of New Guinea is the only guide to cover all 780 bird species reported in the area, including 366 endemics. Expanding its coverage with 111 vibrant color plates—twice as many as the first edition—and the addition of 635 range maps, the book also contains updated species accounts with new information about identification, voice, habits, and range. A must-have for everyone from ecotourists to field researchers, Birds of New Guinea remains an indispensable guide to the diverse birds of this remarkable region.780 bird species, including 366 found nowhere else111 stunning color plates, twice the number of the first editionExpanded and updated species accounts provide details on identification, voice, habits, and range635 range mapsRevised classification of birds reflects the latest researchTrees of Panama and Costa Rica (Princeton Field Guides #74)
Par Richard Condit, Rolando Pérez, Nefertaris Daguerre. 2011
This is the first field guide dedicated to the diverse tree species of Panama and Costa Rica. Featuring close to…
500 tropical tree species, Trees of Panama and Costa Rica includes superb color photos, abundant color distribution maps, and concise descriptions of key characteristics, making this guide readily accessible to botanists, biologists, and casual nature lovers alike. The invaluable introductory chapters discuss tree diversity in Central America and the basics of tree identification. Family and species accounts are treated alphabetically and describe family size, number of genera and species, floral characteristics, and relative abundance. Color distribution maps supplement the useful species descriptions, and facing-page photographic plates detail bark, leaf, flower, or fruit of the species featured. Helpful appendices contain a full glossary, a comprehensive guide to leaf forms, and a list of families not covered. The only tree guide to cover both Panama and Costa Rica together Covers almost 500 species 438 high-resolution color photos 480 color distribution maps and two general maps Concise and jargon-free descriptions of key characteristics for every species Full glossary and guide to leaf forms includedGoogle's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings
Par Amy N. Langville, Carl D. Meyer. 2006
Why doesn't your home page appear on the first page of search results, even when you query your own name?…
How do other web pages always appear at the top? What creates these powerful rankings? And how? The first book ever about the science of web page rankings, Google's PageRank and Beyond supplies the answers to these and other questions and more. The book serves two very different audiences: the curious science reader and the technical computational reader. The chapters build in mathematical sophistication, so that the first five are accessible to the general academic reader. While other chapters are much more mathematical in nature, each one contains something for both audiences. For example, the authors include entertaining asides such as how search engines make money and how the Great Firewall of China influences research. The book includes an extensive background chapter designed to help readers learn more about the mathematics of search engines, and it contains several MATLAB codes and links to sample web data sets. The philosophy throughout is to encourage readers to experiment with the ideas and algorithms in the text. Any business seriously interested in improving its rankings in the major search engines can benefit from the clear examples, sample code, and list of resources provided. Many illustrative examples and entertaining asides MATLAB code Accessible and informal style Complete and self-contained section for mathematics reviewNumerical Algorithms for Personalized Search in Self-organizing Information Networks
Par Sep Kamvar. 2011
This book lays out the theoretical groundwork for personalized search and reputation management, both on the Web and in peer-to-peer…
and social networks. Representing much of the foundational research in this field, the book develops scalable algorithms that exploit the graphlike properties underlying personalized search and reputation management, and delves into realistic scenarios regarding Web-scale data.Sep Kamvar focuses on eigenvector-based techniques in Web search, introducing a personalized variant of Google's PageRank algorithm, and he outlines algorithms--such as the now-famous quadratic extrapolation technique--that speed up computation, making personalized PageRank feasible. Kamvar suggests that Power Method-related techniques ultimately should be the basis for improving the PageRank algorithm, and he presents algorithms that exploit the convergence behavior of individual components of the PageRank vector. Kamvar then extends the ideas of reputation management and personalized search to distributed networks like peer-to-peer and social networks. He highlights locality and computational considerations related to the structure of the network, and considers such unique issues as malicious peers. He describes the EigenTrust algorithm and applies various PageRank concepts to P2P settings. Discussion chapters summarizing results conclude the book's two main sections.Clear and thorough, this book provides an authoritative look at central innovations in search for all of those interested in the subject.More stimulating mathematics puzzles from bestselling author Paul NahinHow do technicians repair broken communications cables at the bottom of the…
ocean without actually seeing them? What's the likelihood of plucking a needle out of a haystack the size of the Earth? And is it possible to use computers to create a universal library of everything ever written or every photo ever taken? These are just some of the intriguing questions that best-selling popular math writer Paul Nahin tackles in Number-Crunching. Through brilliant math ideas and entertaining stories, Nahin demonstrates how odd and unusual math problems can be solved by bringing together basic physics ideas and today's powerful computers. Some of the outcomes discussed are so counterintuitive they will leave readers astonished.Nahin looks at how the art of number-crunching has changed since the advent of computers, and how high-speed technology helps to solve fascinating conundrums such as the three-body, Monte Carlo, leapfrog, and gambler's ruin problems. Along the way, Nahin traverses topics that include algebra, trigonometry, geometry, calculus, number theory, differential equations, Fourier series, electronics, and computers in science fiction. He gives historical background for the problems presented, offers many examples and numerous challenges, supplies MATLAB codes for all the theories discussed, and includes detailed and complete solutions.Exploring the intimate relationship between mathematics, physics, and the tremendous power of modern computers, Number-Crunching will appeal to anyone interested in understanding how these three important fields join forces to solve today's thorniest puzzles.Computational Economics
Par David A. Kendrick, P. Ruben Mercado, Hans M. Amman. 2006
The ability to conceptualize an economic problem verbally, to formulate it as a mathematical model, and then represent the mathematics…
in software so that the model can be solved on a computer is a crucial skill for economists. Computational Economics contains well-known models--and some brand-new ones--designed to help students move from verbal to mathematical to computational representations in economic modeling. The authors' focus, however, is not just on solving the models, but also on developing the ability to modify them to reflect one's interest and point of view. The result is a book that enables students to be creative in developing models that are relevant to the economic problems of their times. Unlike other computational economics textbooks, this book is organized around economic topics, among them macroeconomics, microeconomics, and finance. The authors employ various software systems--including MATLAB, Mathematica, GAMS, the nonlinear programming solver in Excel, and the database systems in Access--to enable students to use the most advantageous system. The book progresses from relatively simple models to more complex ones, and includes appendices on the ins and outs of running each program. The book is intended for use by advanced undergraduates and professional economists and even, as a first exposure to computational economics, by graduate students. Organized by economic topics Progresses from simple to more complex models Includes instructions on numerous software systems Encourages customization and creativityConus of the Southeastern United States and Caribbean
Par Alan J. Kohn. 2014
Conus is the largest genus of animals in the sea, occurring throughout the world's tropical and subtropical oceans and contributing…
significantly to marine biodiversity. The shells of these marine mollusks are prized for their amazing variety and extraordinary beauty. The neurotoxic venoms they produce—injected by a hollow, harpoon-like tooth into prey animals that are then paralyzed and swallowed whole—have a range of pharmaceutical applications, from painkillers to antidepressants. This beautifully illustrated book identifies 53 valid species of the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, a region that supports a diverse but taxonomically challenging group of Conus. Introductory chapters cover the evolution and phylogeny of the genus, and notes on methodology are provided. Detailed species accounts describe key identification features, taxonomy, distribution, ecology, toxicology, life history, and evolutionary relationships. The book includes more than 2,100 photos of shells on 109 splendid color plates; more than 100 additional photos, many depicting live animals in color; and 35 color distribution maps.Identifies 53 valid species—the first reassessment of western Atlantic Conus in more than seventy yearsFeatures more than 2,100 photos of shells on 109 color platesBlends the traditional shell-character approach to identification with cutting-edge shell and radular tooth morphometrics and molecular genetic analysesIncludes color images of live animals as well as color distribution mapsThe Silicon Jungle: A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue
Par Shumeet Baluja. 2011
A suspenseful story about the dangers of unknowingly revealing our most intimate thoughts and actions onlineWhat happens when a naive…
intern is granted unfettered access to people's most private thoughts and actions? Stephen Thorpe lands a coveted internship at Ubatoo, an Internet empire that provides its users with popular online services, from a search engine and e-mail, to social networking. When Stephen’s boss asks him to work on a project with the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, Stephen innocently obliges, believing he is mining Ubatoo’s vast databases to protect people unfairly targeted in the name of national security. But nothing is as it seems. Suspicious individuals surface, doing all they can to access Ubatoo’s wealth of confidential information. This need not require technical wizardry—simply knowing how to manipulate a well-intentioned intern may be enough.The Silicon Jungle is a cautionary fictional tale of data mining’s promise and peril. Baluja raises ethical questions about contemporary technological innovations, and how minute details can be routinely pieced together into rich profiles that reveal our habits, goals, and secret desires—all ready to be exploited.Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization
Par Gene I. Rochlin. 1998
Voice mail. E-mail. Bar codes. Desktops. Laptops. Networks. The Web. In this exciting book, Gene Rochlin takes a closer look…
at how these familiar and pervasive productions of computerization have become embedded in all our lives, forcing us to narrow the scope of our choices, our modes of control, and our experiences with the real world. Drawing on fascinating narratives from fields that range from military command, air traffic control, and international fund transfers to library cataloging and supermarket checkouts, Rochlin shows that we are rapidly making irreversible and at times harmful changes in our business, social, and personal lives to comply with the formalities and restrictions of information systems. The threat is not the direct one once framed by the idea of insane robots or runaway mainframes usurping human functions for their own purposes, but the gradual loss of control over hardware, software, and function through networks of interconnection and dependence. What Rochlin calls the computer trap has four parts: the lure, the snare, the costs, and the long-term consequences. The lure is obvious: the promise of ever more powerful and adaptable tools with simpler and more human-centered interfaces. The snare is what usually ensues. Once heavily invested in the use of computers to perform central tasks, organizations and individuals alike are committed to new capacities and potentials, whether they eventually find them rewarding or not. The varied costs include a dependency on the manufacturers of hardware and software--and a seemingly pathological scramble to keep up with an incredible rate of sometimes unnecessary technological change. Finally, a lack of redundancy and an incredible speed of response make human intervention or control difficult at best when (and not if) something goes wrong. As Rochlin points out, this is particularly true for those systems whose interconnections and mechanisms are so deeply concealed in the computers that no human being fully understands them.Discrete and Computational Geometry
Par Satyan L. Devadoss, Joseph O'Rourke. 2011
An essential introduction to discrete and computational geometryDiscrete geometry is a relatively new development in pure mathematics, while computational geometry…
is an emerging area in applications-driven computer science. Their intermingling has yielded exciting advances in recent years, yet what has been lacking until now is an undergraduate textbook that bridges the gap between the two. Discrete and Computational Geometry offers a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to this cutting-edge frontier of mathematics and computer science.This book covers traditional topics such as convex hulls, triangulations, and Voronoi diagrams, as well as more recent subjects like pseudotriangulations, curve reconstruction, and locked chains. It also touches on more advanced material, including Dehn invariants, associahedra, quasigeodesics, Morse theory, and the recent resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. Connections to real-world applications are made throughout, and algorithms are presented independently of any programming language. This richly illustrated textbook also features numerous exercises and unsolved problems.The essential introduction to discrete and computational geometryCovers traditional topics as well as new and advanced materialFeatures numerous full-color illustrations, exercises, and unsolved problemsSuitable for sophomores in mathematics, computer science, engineering, or physicsRigorous but accessibleAn online solutions manual is available (for teachers only).The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction
Par Gísli Pálsson. 2024
How an iconic bird&’s final days exposed the reality of human-caused extinctionThe great auk is one of the most tragic…
and documented examples of extinction. A flightless bird that bred primarily on the remote islands of the North Atlantic, the last of its kind were killed in Iceland in 1844. Gísli Pálsson draws on firsthand accounts from the Icelanders who hunted the last great auks to bring to life a bygone age of Victorian scientific exploration while offering vital insights into the extinction of species.Pálsson vividly recounts how British ornithologists John Wolley and Alfred Newton set out for Iceland to collect specimens only to discover that the great auks were already gone. At the time, the Victorian world viewed extinction as an impossibility or trivialized it as a natural phenomenon. Pálsson chronicles how Wolley and Newton documented the fate of the last birds through interviews with the men who killed them, and how the naturalists&’ Icelandic journey opened their eyes to the disappearance of species as a subject of scientific concern—and as something that could be caused by humans.Blending a richly evocative narrative with rare, unpublished material as well as insights from ornithology, anthropology, and Pálsson&’s own North Atlantic travels, The Last of Its Kind reveals how the saga of the great auk opens a window onto the human causes of mass extinction.